Like most women aged twenty to fifty-five, I saw the cosy marketing photoshoot for The Materialists and knew that I had to go and see it. It’s an A24 movie, expectations were high.

The Materialists was written and directed by Celine Song following the success of her first feature Past Lives. And though it looks like a classic 2000s romcom on the tin, it was anything but.

This review will contain spoilers so, if you want to remain mystified, read no further.

In The Materialists, Dakota Johnson plays Lucy, a successful matchmaker in NYC, who at the beginning of the film is attending the ninth wedding of her masterful matchmaking career. It is there she meets Harry Castillo (portrayed by Pedro Pascal), a unicorn in the dating world: extremely wealthy, intelligent, good looking and well-dressed. It is also where she crosses paths with ex-boyfriend John (played by Chris Evans) who’s working for the caterer of the wedding. A classic set up for a romance movie.

Lucy hasn’t seen John for a long time. They have a cigarette outside and talk with the intimacy of people who are so familiar with each other they forgo the rules of personal space. He drives her home, and she can’t help but feel that everything about him is exactly the same. The car, its smell, where he lives, his never-ending endeavour to be a successful actor. They used to fight about money and it’s all Lucy can see when she looks at John. The cheap restaurants they’d have dates in, the parking they wouldn’t shell out for, the compromises that a lack of wealth had forced upon them. She’d watched her parents argue over finances and, in wanting to avoid repeating history, pushed John away.

Harry, on the other hand, works for his mother’s private equity firm and lives in a 12-million-dollar penthouse apartment. While Lucy initially tries to reel him in as a client to matchmake off with some lucky lady, he pursues her. With Harry, Lucy makes two things abundantly clear: that the next man she dates she will marry, and that she wants to marry filthily, disgustingly rich.

Where we so often expect love to be the driving force of a romance movie – making people do ridiculous things in public or racing off to airports – money is at the centre of The Materialists.

On their second date, Harry buys Lucy a massive, luxury box of red peonies. It’s a caricature of love, a box to be ticked, I couldn’t look away from it. It was cumbersome to hold, the flowers bounced distractingly on their long stems, its grandiosity put money where affection should’ve been.

A supposed subplot meant to derail Lucy from her money-chasing ways involves one of her favourite but difficult-to-match clients Sophie having a date where the worst possible thing happens. The risks of dating are something few wish to acknowledge. The guy whom Lucy chose for Sophie had appeared to check all the right boxes: tallish, good money, good job, full head of hair. Lucy’s character is invariably devastated for Sophie, but this plot point had more shock than narrative value. It fell short.

Lucy’s confidence at work is shaken and she comes to question her career path. She never confides in Harry, her now boyfriend, about this and the audience is supposed to make the connection themselves that they are obviously wrong for each other. Harry is never given an onscreen chance to notice Lucy’s internal battle. Every scene until their breakup is romantic to the point of cheesy. Their ultimate breakdown feels flat and unjustified except for Lucy’s proclamation that neither of them are in love. There are emotional scenes that have been left on the cutting room floor or in a Word doc somewhere. They were gravely missed.

Where money had pushed John and Lucy apart, it wasn’t able to keep Harry and Lucy together.

And yet…

Though nothing about either of them has really changed in the years they’ve been apart, John cannot help but be available for Lucy. Loving her even when she’s telling him how much his poorness disgusts her, how much she’d have to compromise to be with him. In response to this he says he can’t give her money but will set calendar reminders in his phone to remind himself that he loves her every day, even when it’s hard. The ‘materialist’ in Lucy’s character is evident throughout the movie, but these interactions with John hurt the most.

Dakota Johnson’s character tells prospective clients that ‘dating is hard, but when you find love, it will be easy’. This is a common rhetoric I grew up hearing. Not that relationships don’t require commitment and showing up for your partner, but that loving someone shouldn’t feel like hard work. However, when Lucy finally admits to John that she loves him back, she breaks this tenet.

This isn’t a first date movie, unless you wish to leave discussing each other’s material items and the wealth you will or won’t be bringing to the business end of your prospective relationship. I suppose this is meant to be a critique – or a mirror – on dating in the 2020s, but the cynicism leaves you wanting. There is no ‘aha’ moment nor a plot device designed to trap the viewer into a moral dilemma. Sure, dating apps have reinforced a shallower aspect to dating, but no one will leave the cinema thinking they’re the problem.

Lucy doesn’t change, she only gives in to history repeating itself.

I left the cinema after watching The Materialists feeling only okay about it.

⭐⭐💫
2.5 out of 5 stars